I just submitted a team with all players between 22.7 and 27.9 usage (besides three junkers). Kinda high on the usage side, but pretty consistent. Everybody at four usage points except Timmy at 6. I'm predicting 81-1 (jk).

After 32 games we are currently 19-13, tied for the division lead. Not exactly on top of the world, but not a total failure. A bad rookie set that also doesn't fit out needs exceptionally well hasn't helped. With a CCD rookie set I'd like this team's chances in the playoffs a little better (DDD isn't helping our fatigue issues). I'm currently projecting them as a 2nd or 3rd round out.

Does increased usage do anything positive for a team at all? That's what I've been working on now for a bit. I am building two similar OL teams to get some additional data to the years of accumulated data already found by myself and others.

Hypothesis: Increased usage will result in a slight reduction of the increased turnovers the sim produces while simultaneously resulting in slightly a slightly better fg%.

The Test: I'm running two teams with a very similar estimated tov% but with varying usage. One is just MJ/CP3 & a bunch of board lords. The other is the same duo with a lower tov% shaq than I used in the previous example (01-02, 10% vs 04-05, 12.4%)

Team 1 has an estimated tov% of 12.7%. Total usage points in SL is 14.
Team 2 has an estimated tov% of 12.3%. Total usage points in SL is 19.

This extra usage in team 2 is translating to an additional 800 or so FGA and an additional 800 or so FTA (with only about 100 more tov). Team 1 has about 500 more minutes, which means they'll rely a little less on rookies than team 2 will.

Let's see which version seems to have a higher tov% increase... and see if there is any correlation in fg% (much harder to determine because of all of the uncontrolled variables).

T1 using a Camby Rotation at C while T2 is using a Shaq rotation.
T1 uses 88-89 Worm while T2 is using 92-93 Worm. This was necessary for salary purposes (and to give T2 a lift on the boards since Camby > Shaq)
T1 has about 500 more minutes than T2 (meaning less leaning on rookies).
T1 & T2 have some different backups. Again, salary questions.
T1 will have 23 different opponents with varying defensive ratings & stl%s than T2. This is a huge variable and could mean nothing in this test is significant.
The sim itself is extremely finicky and is prone to extreme variation itself without any changes at all.

and even if you do have those 10 points you can easily have all sorts of issues by triggering the individual penalties (unless you're playing my team in which case you get no turnovers and everyone shoots 5% over IRL and my team incurs all the penalties yours should be suffering)

Posted by felonius on 8/12/2013 11:49:00 PM (view original):and even if you do have those 10 points you can easily have all sorts of issues by triggering the individual penalties (unless you're playing my team in which case you get no turnovers and everyone shoots 5% over IRL and my team incurs all the penalties yours should be suffering)

that's basically what I'm trying to figure out... how much usage do you need to offset the individual penalty?

The typical up-tempo team ends up with 7500-8000 fgas in the sim. Even drafting 14 usage points (and insuring the same tier for backups), I often only end up with 5500-5700 fgas (for 17k minutes drafted). My goal was to up the amount of fgas drafted with the same number of minutes to above 6375 (for ratio purposes). When I did that, I found that I needed/had a ton more usage than the common practice.